Fall Arts Preview

The New Nimble

COMEDY

THENEXTLAUGH

Virginia Jones

COMEDIENNE

"You know what really gets my goat?" asks Virginia Jones. "Wolves."

Pause … hope … laughter.

In the suspenseful lifestyle of casting one-liners for yuks (and bucks), Jones is one of a growing cabal of local weekend warriors tackling stand-up comedy—and, sometimes, slowly, starting to shape their work schedules around the gigs rather than vice versa.

"The great thing about stand-up," she asserts, "is that you can work and hone until you get it just right … It’s completely unlike brain surgery." Pause … hope …

On September 4, Jones will perform in the Grand Dames of Comedy showcase at Hawthorne Theatre and host two open-mic nights for Curious Comedy Theater, Portland’s first and only nonprofit comedy group.

"There’s a lot of new energy," Jones says, noting the three-year-old Bridgetown Comedy Festival’s importing of such nationally acclaimed acts as Patton Oswalt and Janeane Garofalo and the opening of city’s first comedy chain franchise, Helium, which lifted off this summer.

Why the sudden P-town laugh riot? Is it our coping mechanism for rising unemployment? Indie-rock fatigue? Jones calls it a perfect storm of rising national interest (e.g., the reality show Last Comic Standing), plus the growing chops of locals like Richard Bain, Christian Ricketts, and Marcia Belsky.

"There’s all this hungry talent," she says. "They book anywhere they can—old-man bars, Thai restaurants—just to some get mic time."

"When I started doing showcases, going to comedy was only slightly less hip than going to a funeral," Jones adds, without pause but with plenty of hope. "I think now it’s starting to explode." —AA

GREGPROOPS
Sept 9-11 The dapper Proops is a versatile comic best known as one of the performers on the American version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, a show that required him to slip in and out of multiple characters, Zelig-like, for laughs. Targets include Christian psychos, gun-toting rednecks, and, the root of it all, our nation’s City-on-a-Hill Puritan heritage. Helium Comedy Club, 1510 SE Ninth Ave. portland.heliumcomedy.com —JC

Please help us keep this community civil. We retain the right to remove or edit comments containing personal attacks or excessive profanity, and comments unrelated to the editorial content. Consult our Terms of Use for more details.